Jenea Chance

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In an orchard in California, the body of a beloved father is discovered.

It was definitely unsettling.

Why would someone ditch the car and leave the handgun right there in plain sight?

The investigation leads to a hard-working family harboring a dark secret.

He asked for kind of racy type photos, sexual type photos, and she sent him.

A cunning mastermind is willing to go to any length to throw detectives off the trail.

They went to this place in Las Vegas, crime scene CSI, the experience.

They talk about how to defeat DNA, namely using bleach.

The video surveillance showed a person fairly well disguised, wearing a hat, wearing glasses, bulky clothing.

Eventually, they tell her, we know it's you.

But when the cards are on the table, will justice be served?

I was just completely floored.

I just remember I felt so guilty.

You're wrong.

You're caught.

You'll probably be on a TV show someday.

It's just before 9 a.m.

on Sunday, August 25th, 2013, in Kern County, California.

On an almond orchard outside Bakersfield, a worker makes his morning rounds through rows of almond trees.

You wouldn't really have any reason to be out there unless you had work in the fields.

It isn't long before the worker stops in his tracks.

He saw a body laying there in the orchard.

He was rather shocked and he approached the body.

He looks more carefully.

The individual is not moving and appears to be deceased.

So he makes a phone call to his boss, who then makes a a call to law enforcement.

When I arrived on scene, I walked up and I met with many of the detectives.

We moved him over and I located two gunshot wounds to the right side of his chest.

It was definitely unsettling.

He also had what appeared to be a gunshot wound to his hand at a very close range.

It would appear that at the moment he was being shot, he instinctively raised his hand to try to protect himself.

Officers talked to everyone involved in terms of finding the body.

And what they found was that around 7.30 in the morning, there was workman that was out there in the fields and at that time did not see anything out of the ordinary.

But on a second pass through between 9 and 910, saw a body.

So that gave them a timeline to work with.

Searching him, I located his wallet.

That's when we were able to identify him as Todd Chance and it provided us an address.

Todd's body was found around 15 to 20 miles from his house.

What happens in Kern County too often is there are people that are killed.

They take the body and they dump it out in orchards.

We have a man who is obviously deceased as a result of being shot to death.

It's clearly not a robbery.

The individual had a wallet in their pocket.

It was a planned and considered murder.

They need to figure out if there's anyone that would want to hurt him or harm him.

Born on March 10th, 1968, Todd Chance was raised 20 miles outside Bakersfield, California in the farming community of Shafter.

He grew up raising like pigs and around barnyard animals, doing everything outside, always into cars and dirt bikes.

He was very close to his mother and his father and his brother.

Loved his cars, loved doing things with his father.

Was very into guns.

In In 1995, Todd Chance got engaged to 22-year-old Carrie Williams and dreamed of starting a family.

Carrie and Todd were in love.

They were high school sweethearts.

She was actually very close with Todd's parents.

But shortly after the engagement, the wedding was called off.

Growing up, I had heard of Carrie Williams.

All I knew about was that things had ended badly.

Todd didn't stay single for long.

Later that year, while working as a drugstore security guard, he developed a crush on a 28-year-old cashier named Janae Bullman.

Todd was attracted to her and pursuing her romantically.

They ended up meeting up and they started dating.

One thing led to another.

Their life was going in the right direction.

While Todd came of age enjoying the great outdoors, Janae was a born-and-raised city girl.

My mom was born here in Bakersfield.

She had an amazing relationship with both her mom and dad.

She dated my dad from about middle school until they eventually got married after high school.

And then she had me when she was 22.

Janae's first marriage ended just before her daughter Jessica was born in 1989.

So my mom was kind of on her own as a single mom with me, working three jobs and going to school full-time.

Janae found Todd to be a perfect counterpart to her hectic lifestyle as she worked towards her teaching degree.

They were the same, but they were different.

They were both funny and hardworking.

But then she was like a little city girl and he was a cowboy.

Janae Janae was in a situation where she felt vulnerable and was on her own, but Todd came around and just swept her off of her feet.

A year after their first date, Todd and Janae tied the knot.

When my mom and Todd got married, while they were exchanging rings, he also presented me with a pearl bracelet with my name on it.

He was so amazing to me.

I mean, he was in every aspect my dad.

And he never made me feel left out.

Now that Todd and Janae have given themselves to each other,

the couple married on August 17th, 1996.

The new Mr.

and Mrs.

Todd Chance were well on their way to living happily ever after.

Todd landed a job as a truck driver.

while Janae completed her teaching degree.

She just had a passion for helping people, and especially kids and she just always had that drive and she just

she made it.

She did everything she set out to do.

Todd and Janae added two more daughters to the family, Sarah in 1998 and Samantha in 2000.

Honestly, we're all raised the same.

We don't even think of each other as having different dads to be honest.

We're just sisters.

There was times where I used to say Todd was my favorite parent.

He would have this hard exterior, but me and my sisters could just get him to melt real easy.

So he tried to play tough, but we all knew we had him wrapped around our fingers.

You can't!

With Todd's support around the house, Janae surged ahead on her career path, going from teacher to administrator.

She moved up fairly quickly, and she served time as an administrator at a couple different schools and then was selected as a principal of Fairview School.

She was made for that role.

I mean just sitting back and watching her do it, she was amazing.

By the summer of 2013, Todd and Janae Chance were a solid upper-middle class couple and decided it was time to finally enjoy the fruits of their labor.

So they took about three trips, I believe, that summer.

They went to San Francisco, the beach, and Las Vegas.

My mom had always worked every summer school, and it was just kind of making up for lost times.

But now, under a sweltering August sun, law enforcement officials stand over the body of Todd Chance, wondering what led to his violent death.

Not far from the body, investigators recover a cell phone that belongs to Todd Chance.

His cell phone is found 25 feet approximately away from him.

The phone had either been dropped by somebody else, possibly thrown.

While surveying the area, investigators note the absence of blood on the scene, which suggests that Todd Chance was killed elsewhere.

It gave us the indication that he had been dumped at this site and the crime didn't occur where we found him.

At that point, they were looking at all scenarios, like how did this happen?

You know, how did he get here?

Coming up, could the victim's most prized possession be at the center of his untimely death?

It's the kind of car that's going to grab somebody's attention.

Maybe Todd had been robbed, carjacked for the vehicle.

But are the dots a little too easy to connect?

You have this really nice car with the key and with the gun.

It absolutely looks staged.

After finding the body of 45-year-old Todd Chance in an almond grove outside Bakersfield, California, investigators with the Kern County Sheriff's Department now face a difficult task.

You're notifying a person's loved ones that the person that they love isn't coming home tonight.

And it's always going to be met with a tremendous amount of grief.

For Todd Chance's stepdaughter, Jessica Bullman, it's a moment she will never forget.

I went where they were sitting with my mom, and she was crying, so I knew something had happened.

And I started listening to the questions they were asking, and they were asking questions about guns.

I quickly realized that he was dead.

I remember during that moment, I looked at her and I said, Mom, it's okay.

I'm going to help you get through this.

And she looked at me and said, Jessica, how am I supposed to get through the rest of my life?

And I didn't have an answer for her.

Investigators ask Janae to walk them through her last moments with her husband that morning.

Janae tells detectives that morning that Todd had left at about 7:30 in his prized Mustang, that to her knowledge, he was going to a gun show.

The rest of the day, she talked about how she was doing work.

She talked about how she was doing laundry, chores around the house,

but she never left the house.

Janae explains that Todd would often attend gun shows and was a bit of a collector of vintage pistols.

Investigators ask Janae if all Todd's firearms are accounted for.

She went back and indicated that one of the handguns was in fact missing.

An older, very weathered.38 caliber revolver.

The simple fact that a gun was missing and was not accounted for was very interesting.

Officers have many questions at this point, and one of them is whether or not Todd Chance was shot with his own gun.

Other than the fact Todd was supposed to be attending a gun show that morning, Janae and her daughters can't explain why he might have left the home armed.

Janae said that it would be rare for Todd to

take that gun with him and to have it in the vehicle itself with him.

Detectives ask the family members if Todd was into drugs, if he had any enemies, had any gambling debts, anything that might possibly lead them towards the suspect.

I just remember us like all saying like, no, he was not into drugs.

He was not into alcohol or gambling.

And the enemies thing, there was no enemies.

I mean, Todd was a friend to everyone.

So my first thought was

someone killed him for that car.

So he had a really nice Mustang.

It was a beautiful black, spotless Ford Mustang.

It's the kind of car that's going to grab somebody's attention.

Janae tells detectives that she does not drive Todd's vehicle, that it's his vehicle, that he does not allow that car to be loaned out or other people to drive it.

So that was obviously a theory initially that Todd had possibly gone to a gas station, a mini-mart, had stopped somewhere, and had been carjacked for the vehicle and then taken out to the scene where he was found murdered.

Investigators are just wrapping up their interview when they receive what could be a game-changing tip.

While detectives were at the residence, they were notified over their radios that Todd's car car had been located.

The Mustang has been spotted in an area known for criminal activity and reported to 911 by a concerned neighbor who claims it had been there for about six hours.

The person who saw the vehicle noticed it appeared to be out of place and had possibly been abandoned in the neighborhood and felt the vehicle may be a stolen vehicle.

I'm thinking this is going to hold everything.

They're going to be able to crack the case with this because in my mind, I'm thinking it was a carjacking gone wrong.

And that it all had to do with that car.

Investigators race to the location.

The first thing that they noticed was that the car was unlocked.

Secondly, that there was a key to the car on the floorboard.

And also visible was the handle of a revolver on the floorboard.

It was a.38 caliber revolver.

And Todd's gun was a.38 caliber revolver.

It was a significant piece of evidence that really, really cinched it for me.

The gun is still loaded and there are two discharged rounds still in the cylinder.

Considering Todd was shot with two bullets, Investigators know they may be looking at their murder weapon, and it's collected as evidence.

But to investigators, a glaring question emerges.

Why would someone ditch the car and leave the handgun right there in plain sight?

Todd's car is found in a neighborhood known to police as a haven for drugs and crime.

But to investigators, something seems off.

Normally, if a firearm is used in a crime, someone is going to take it, they're going to hide it, they're going to dispose of it.

you have this really nice car with the key right there nice and visible and with a gun the fact that the car was unlocked it's almost like a please steal me sign it absolutely looks staged

Once the vehicle was located, deputies and detectives went door to door questioning neighbors to find out if anybody had seen who

abandoned the vehicle.

There were two different witnesses.

They saw a person with a red backpack walk off southbound out of the neighborhood towards the main street of Panama Lane.

The witnesses report seeing this individual at around 9 o'clock that morning.

Incredibly, one neighbor even caught the person on a security camera.

The surveillance showed a person of medium height, medium build, fairly well disguised, if you will, wearing a hat, wearing glasses, and bulky clothing.

It would be hard to identify the person given how they were dressed.

There's still some additional investigation that needs to be done, but we do have suspect for the murder of Todd Chance.

Coming up, a shadowy figure emerges as suspect number one.

She has the red backpack.

She has the white plastic garbage bag.

She walks in and she doesn't get anything, then goes off camera.

And a possible motive comes to light.

Detectives really have to step back and kind of contemplate that perhaps is there a double life going on?

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Investigators have located the missing vehicle of murder victim Todd Chance.

Now, Kern County detectives are scouring the area where the Mustang was found after a suspicious person was caught on camera near the scene.

They start looking at businesses that would possibly have video showing anyone going in or out of that area during the time period that was relevant for them.

After sifting through all the businesses in the area, detectives catch a break.

At 9.12 a.m.

on August 25th, surveillance footage shows the same figure enter a Starbucks within walking distance of where Todd's car was found.

By now, investigators are convinced the suspect is a woman with her hair tucked into a baseball cap.

She has the red backpack.

She has the white plastic garbage bag.

She walks in and she doesn't get anything, but rather she passes right by the cash register and the lines of people getting

and goes to the area where the restroom is and goes off camera.

Surveillance footage shows the woman reappearing at 9.17, albeit with a new look.

The top has been changed, the shoes have definitely been changed, and it looks like there are different pants.

The angle and the clarity and just the viewpoint of the camera itself, you were unable to make a facial identification.

There was not a sufficient picture to be able to do that.

Though the woman's face remains obscured, a small detail catches the eye of investigators.

You can distinctly make out

in that white plastic bag is a yellow cylindrical plastic container of bleach wipes.

That raises a red flag for officers because you can use bleach to clean items so that there will be no evidence of DNA or fingerprints.

Video from the garden area of a hardware store across from the Starbucks captured the same woman minutes later disposing of her original outfit behind stacked bags of soil.

But unfortunately, by that point, The garbage had been collected, everything had been moved, so they were not able to find anything.

Based on the suspect's physical similarities to Todd's wife and the apparent staging of Todd's missing car and gun, investigators have to ask, could the woman caught on tape be Janae Chance?

By all accounts, there didn't appear to be any prior history of problems in their marriage.

Certainly no history of domestic violence.

Everybody that detectives spoke to said that they had a good marriage.

After receiving the passcode to Todd's phone from Janae, investigators search the phone recovered from the crime scene, looking for any clues that might explain a motive.

At first, all they see are happy pictures from the Chance family's recent travels.

All these vacations, being a family, those two cuddling up together, Todd and Janae cuddling up together.

But digging deeper, investigators discover something more lurid.

Todd had traded steamy messages with his ex-girlfriend, Carrie Williams, nearly six months prior to his murder.

Todd asked for kind of racy-type photos, sexual type photos, and she sent them.

Detectives really have to step back and kind of contemplate that perhaps there's more than meets the eye here about Todd.

And if in fact he is having an affair, is there a double life going on?

And is there a way that Janae knew?

Now with two female suspects in frame, detectives need to determine which one is on camera.

Carrie and Janae were similar enough that certainly the detectives would want to look to see if

there was a motive there and whether or not there was an alibi there.

Investigators interview Carrie Williams on August 17th, 2013.

When investigators spoke to her, she was distraught about his death.

She was upset.

She was embarrassed about the fact that she had sent photographs to him.

that were compromising.

Todd had asked his ex about the two two of them getting together, but his ex had declined that.

I believe her exact words were, no way married man.

They basically asked her to run down where she was that weekend, and she explains that she had left town.

Carrie claims at the time of the murder, she and her daughter were 170 miles away in San Juan Capistrano, and she has the evidence to prove it.

She actually got a parking ticket that morning.

That alibi for Carrie was absolutely solid.

After detectives clear Carrie Williams from suspicion, they get word that Ballistics has finished the analysis of the.38 caliber revolver found in Todd's Mustang.

and it's a match to Todd's wounds.

Detectives now know that Todd was shot with his own gun.

What's more telling is what they didn't find in his car.

They were unable to find any blood in the car.

But clearly, the car had been wiped down with bleach.

They did, however,

find

one single solitary fingerprint.

It was on the driver's side door

by the door handle.

And that fingerprint belonged to Janae Chance.

In addition, they were able to find Janae Chance's DNA on the steering wheel and on the gear shift.

It was Janae's own statement that she did not drive the car.

She doesn't drive that car.

DNA consistent with Janae Chance, both on the wheel and on the gear shift, was utterly inconsistent with what she was saying.

Detectives, as this investigation went on, go back.

They speak to Janae.

They narrow their investigation to her.

Coming up.

A search of Todd and Janae's home turns up a surprising new lead.

A photograph that caught their attention.

It was a photograph of the family taken at a place in Las Vegas called CSI, the experience.

Is this a keepsake from the family's last vacation together or a blueprint for murder?

There was one scenario involving a woman who kills her husband and leaves him in a remote desert area.

Evidence in the murder investigation of Todd Chance has begun to point to his wife of 17 years, Janae.

There was DNA located on the gear shift, as well as the steering wheel that belonged to Janae Chance.

And also, the very gun that killed Todd was their own gun.

The motive, the text messages, the nude photos, it was everything together that really, really made this case.

It's not one key piece of evidence that makes the whole case.

It's all of it together.

With the pieces falling into place, investigators turn once again to the video surveillance footage from the morning of Todd's murder.

This time, they find a street camera near Todd and Janae's home.

We see that same figure walking down the street with a backpack in the same neighborhood as Todd and Janae's house is at shortly after 10 a.m.

After reviewing the footage, investigators need to speak to Janae Chance once again, and this time they bring her down to the station.

I'm flabbergasted right now, and I'm so

worried about my kids right now.

So, what happens now?

Now, we need to know why.

There's no reason to know whether there is a why.

There is is a reason.

You're not a cold-blooded killer.

You're really not.

I don't think you are.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Tell me.

You're wrong about everything.

Tell me you didn't plan this for weeks.

When Janae sits down with detectives, they confront her about the surveillance videos.

People say that's Janae.

They look at that.

That's not

Janae.

I don't think that looks like me at all.

She's defensive.

She's not very happy about it.

She is denying that she is the person in those videos.

And when confronted with her DNA found in Todd's vehicle indicating she had driven the car, Janae claims it's an anomaly.

I can't explain that.

I can't either.

The only way to explain it is you were in the car.

The only explanation is the only explanation.

How do I prove myself that I was?

Eventually, they tell her, we know it's you.

She's all what?

And then, we know it's you.

We know you know about Carrie.

She indicated that she had no reason to believe that Todd had either been unfaithful or had tried to be unfaithful or anything of that sort.

She loved her husband and did not kill him.

That was her story.

You're wrong.

No, I'm not wrong.

We are not wrong.

It's time for you to woman up.

You're a smart woman.

You're a principal of a school.

You're caught.

Okay?

You're caught.

You murdered your husband.

You'll probably be on a TV show someday.

I'm refusing to talk to you because you are yelling at me.

Explain that to me.

So, okay, I want a lawyer.

There we go.

Will I get rid of you?

Because I am not going to respond to you.

Okay, it's because you're a murderer.

No.

Yes, you're under arrest for murder.

They place her under arrest for the first-degree murder of Todd Chance.

Police executed search warrants at Janae and Todd's home after she was in custody.

Of particular interest were her computer, since she had claimed that she had been on it that morning, as well as any cell phone, bank accounts, life insurance policies.

I'm sitting there with my little sisters while we're just watching about 30 people go through our house, turning it upside down.

And then all of a sudden, I I hear she's been arrested.

And I just like

about passed out.

I was so overwhelmed with what am I going to do.

Despite what investigators believe is a slam dunk case, on September 3rd, 2013, the DA throws a curveball and refuses to prosecute the case due to lack of evidence.

Janae is released from custody.

We absolutely felt that Janae was the one who committed the murder, but we felt that we also did not have enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt at that time.

As months go by, investigators meticulously sift through the mountains of evidence seized at the Chance home to build a stronger case against Janae.

During the search of the Chance home, there were a number of photographs and personal items that were taken.

One was a photograph of the family, Todd, Janae, and their two daughters, at CSI Experience in Las Vegas.

It was basically an exhibit for tourists in Vegas at the MGM Grand Hotel dedicated to the show Crime Scene CSI.

in which people are offered various scenarios to try to solve a crime using forensic techniques.

On January 22nd, 2014, investigators head to Las Vegas to check out the exhibit.

The detectives also went over, they went through all of the scenarios themselves.

And there was one particular scenario that they wanted to go through that involved a woman who kills her husband and leaves him out

in a remote desert area.

That scenario seems eerily similar to Todd's murder, but there's something else about the exhibit that jumps out to investigators.

Essentially, you act like you are a detective or a crime lab person.

You're going through this crime scene.

Some of the things that were included in that exhibit seemed to line up with the murder of Todd Chance.

There was a great emphasis on how DNA fingerprints on guns, on evidence can lead to the discovery of the suspect and that a way to to combat that is to use bleach.

Another thing that was very, very interesting was evidence can get on shoes.

Trace evidence can get on shoes.

Things can be tracked from shoes.

We saw from the video of the person walking away from Todd's car, Janae, and and then walking in Starbucks, those shoes were changed.

So those things were all very significant.

Investigators pair this information with the surveillance video of the woman from the day Todd was killed and find a disturbing coincidence.

It certainly looked like in looking at the video that a plastic bag with a circular object appeared to be like cleaning wipes, bleach wipes.

Investigators still need more physical evidence against Janae to arrest her.

In late 2014, detectives send her computer to the FBI for a more in-depth inspection, and the process is far more time-consuming than they anticipated.

That

examination was extremely thorough.

very involved and took a substantial amount of time.

In fact, it took over a year.

It did not appear that there had been any activity on her computer during the time period wherein she said she was home during the time that Todd was murdered.

It really took apart her alibi.

Coming up, a critical witness drops a bombshell.

She was asked, well, if that's your mother, what does that mean?

And she starts crying.

I felt so guilty that I had like betrayed my mom.

After dismantling Janae Chance's alibi, prosecutors finally have enough substantial evidence to indict her on December 1st, 2016 for the brutal murder of her husband, Todd Chance.

They got a report back.

from the FBI.

They had done an analysis on Janae's hard drive and determined that there was no activity on her hard drive for a period of time that included the time Todd was murdered.

That really kind of sealed the deal.

That was kind of the last piece of information that we needed answered before we were willing to go forward on this case.

On December 1st, 2016, more than three years after Todd's death, Janae is arrested for carrying out her husband's murder.

That same night, the couple's children are questioned again by Kern County Sheriff's Invators.

When they asked to take me to the interrogation room, I asked them,

why now?

What's new now?

And then that's when they start showing the videos.

Her body language speaks volumes.

A young woman who's seeing things that she didn't want to see.

There's a red backpack that she picks up on very early on and says, Hey, did you find that backpack?

My mom has a backpack like that.

I was just so overwhelmed.

Nothing was really making sense during that time.

First of all, is that your mother?

Is that your mother in all the videos?

I didn't believe so.

When I looked back at it, I felt so guilty that I had like betrayed my mom.

When Janae's trial begins on December 9th, 2019, the prosecution is fully aware they have a largely circumstantial case.

And Janae's daughter, Jessica, has changed her opinion about what she saw on the video.

I was not surprised at all when Jessica backed off of what she had said during the interview with detectives.

She essentially recanted much of that testimony.

The daughters all testified that that wasn't their mom in the video.

Despite the setback, prosecutors paint Janae Chance as a scorned wife, stuck in a loveless marriage and looking for a quick way out

according to the prosecution what happened was

janae found out about carrie williams sending photographs to that of her husband that sets her off on such a rampage and she starts gathering everything she needs to do to basically end his life over these photographs My reaction to bullshit

their motive was lacking when the fact no one ever said that there was any response to her ever finding out about these photos that were sent to her husband.

During the trial, prosecutors lay out their version of what happened on the morning of August 25th, 2013.

Janae lured Todd away from their home, armed with a.38-caliber revolver.

She might have said to him, honey, I think we need to have a talk, and I think we need to have it in private somewhere.

And the two of them drove off to have a talk.

She pulled out a gun and fired it twice at her husband and killed him.

Prosecutors believe Janae modeled the plan after the CSI Las Vegas exhibit the family had visited just months prior to the murder.

They say this was part of the premeditation and deliberation.

She planned a trip to Vegas.

They all went to the CSI experience.

And allegedly, one of the exhibits, someone died and the body was found in a field.

And that was where she gleaned her idea of how she was going to kill him.

Janae's defense team disagrees.

The police using the CSI little walkthrough from Vegas as evidence against my mom was such a reach for me.

It was actually Sarah's idea to go to the CSI exhibit.

My sisters had pushed for it and so the fact they used that against her was just such a reach.

After a month of testimony, the case goes to the jury.

After the eight days of deliberation, we finally got the notice that there was a verdict.

I was confident that the jury was going to come back with innocent.

The jury finds Janae guilty of first-degree murder.

I was just completely floored.

I just remember getting out of there as fast as I could and just going to the bathroom in the courthouse and just crying and crying.

It was all a blur.

She was, it wasn't real.

It's still a hard pill to swallow because I refuse to take that as an answer.

On September 16th, 2020, Janae Chance is sentenced to 50 years in prison.

For being the overwhelming majority of the community,

I think that it gives hope that, you know, there is

justice.

At the same time, I think that

your heart goes out to the daughters.

When When children lose both parents to such a crime,

it's terrible all the way around.

If I could say anything to Todd, I would tell him I miss him

and that I love him.

And thanks for being so amazing.

To me, like over the years, he was the best dad I could have ever asked for.

And my mom is a very inspiring woman, very determined.

My mom is amazing also.

And for like two lives to be completely ruined over this is devastating to us.

Janae Chance is currently incarcerated at a women's prison in Chowchilla, California.

She won't be eligible for parole until November of 2036.

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